Rapid advances in electronics and communications technologies, driven by consumer demand, have resulted in the widespread adoption of data-driven devices, including those for handling and converting third-party media content. Third-party customers or clients want their content handled with security such that the content is not copied or used outside of certain permission levels, which in some cases means allowing access to content only when providing a proper decryption key. Conditional access (CA) or digital rights management (DRM) systems that stream content digitally for media providers may need to generate a decryption key from a variable length keyladder key for use in content decryption, as a way to secure access to encrypted media stored in memory of consumer media boxes.